Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Mind Under Matter: How the Other Half-Wits Live

As long as one clings to time, space, number and quantity, that person is on the wrong track and God is strange and far away. --Meister Eckhart

Good to see that we are getting some anonymous commenters who are clearly not trolls. Rather, they are asking some honest questions (yes, there most assuredly can be dishonest questions), and should be treated with respect and with patience. For example, this morning someone asked about my use of the word "prior" to describe the higher planes of existence. Now that I think about it, they might just as well object to the word "higher," since it implies the same thing.

As I explained in a comment, in order to describe the vertical at all, we must borrow terms that were developed for use in the horizontal -- indeed, beginning with the words "vertical" and "horizontal"! I prefer these words, because they are relatively empty and unsaturated terms, as opposed to, say, "heaven and earth" or "celestial and terrestrial." One could also say essence and existence, but those are more abstract, and aren't immediately graspable by the imagination.

Likewise, does grace flow like water? You tell me. Do we really ascend to God? Is the unconscious actually "below" the conscious? Each of these words must be understood in a poetic sense -- or perhaps I should say with the poetic sense.

Now, one reason why we say that the vertical is "prior" to the horizontal is because it must be. For if you give it any serious consideration at all, you quickly realize that the reverse could never be true -- that the vertical could not flow from the horizontal, any more than information could come from strict chaos, quality from quantity, mind from matter, etc. Science does not understand how this could be the case, but this is simply a result of prejudice, not "the nature of things." Abandon the scientistic prejudice, turn the cosmos back right side up, and it all makes perfect nonsense.

As I have mentioned before, we could not be human if we didn't have something analogous to a left and right cerebral hemisphere, with very different ways of understanding the world and of processing information. I believe the reason we have a left and right brain is because we simultaneously mirror, and are mirrored by, the cosmos, which has both horizontal and vertical modes.

Obviously science deals with the horizontal aspects of the world. It is linear, deterministic, past-to-future, bottom-up, etc. It also presumes the logical atomism that seems to be "common sense" for the left brain. That is, the universe consists of an infinite number of distinct parts subject to various forces that are external to them.

But the right brain isn't like this at all. Where the left brain is time oriented, the right brain sees things all at once. It is also inherently relational as opposed to atomistic. The right brain sees connections where the left brain sees divisions. It is continuous where the left brain is discontinuous. Here again we see the metacosmic categories of male and female instantiated in the very structure of our humanness: maleandfemale he created them. Yes, in our deep structure we are cosmic hermaphrodites.

Just as it is impossible to imagine a great poet, painter or musician without a highly developed and integrated right brain, it is inconceivable that one could be a great theologian, let alone, saint or mystic, without one. Similarly, one could say that the left brain operates along the lines of asymmetrical logic, while the right brain is the realm of symmetrical logic.

But no one, unless they are severely brain damaged, operates out of only one lobe, so there is always some degree of integration, although it can be relatively conscious and harmonious or unconscious and unharmonious. Often people project with the right what they reject with the left -- which is why, for example, no one is as religious (in the magical sense) as a Darwinist. Matter is the crock upon which they build their church.

In fact, much of the bonehead philosophy that emanates from scientism results either from unacknowledged sympathies coming from the right brain, or a denial of its voice altogether. It sounds half-witted because it is. It is so easy to poke holes in materialism or metaphysical Darwinism that it is shocking that anyone takes the trouble to actually believe in them, since the belief cannot be justified on any consistent logical -- let alone meta-logical -- grounds. Blah blah blah Gödel (who was often mistaken for Eddie Munster).

It should be noted that in childhood the right brain develops well in advance of the left, and that it has much deeper connections to the older parts of the brain such as the limbic system; as such, it is more "emotional," bearing in mind that emotions are a source of information, and that there can be both subtle and gross emotions, and even true and false ones.

As you may have noticed, much of spiritual development involves -- or is at least accompanied by -- a kind of "subtilization" of emotion, which is why it gets harder for you to tolerate being around the Barbarians. For example, although the sacred or holy are just as real as, say, matter -- actually, more so -- they obviously cannot be detected only by the senses, but in the heart, so to speak. In turn, this is why for the left, or for Queeg, nothing is sacred, except in an arbitrary or idiosyncratic way. They cluelessly steamroll over what is infinitely precious, like a child who gleefully smashes a cocoon to see what's inside. Like Queeg, they always confuse blasphemy with courage. Their dysluxia blinds them to the light, while their cardiomyopia prevents the heart from seeing.

Now, one of the easiest ways to render scripture absurd -- and to elevate oneself over what is vastly superior -- is to approach it with the left brain of the scientistic mind. This is typically what the anti-religious bigots do, always with great self-satisfaction, as if they are the first to notice that a literal reading of scripture is problematic. But if you approach the same passages with bi-logic, the problem usually disappears.

For example, what can it possibly mean that "Christ is in me" and that "I am in Christ"? From the standpoint of conventional logic, this is patently absurd, like saying that "I am now in the Slacktuary" and that "the Slacktuary is now in me." But from the standpoint of symmetrical logic, it not only makes perfect sense, but is a kind of logical corollary. That is, if Christ is in me, then I am necessarily in him. (Again, think of dream logic, in which contradictory statements or situations can be equally true.)

Likewise, we all know that God is both radically transcendent, or "beyond everything," and intensely immanent, or "within everything." With conventional logic, these statements would be mutually exclusive, but from the standpoint of symmetrical logic, they are again complementary and not at all problematic. Yes, most people are incapable of metaphysics, and therefore must take these kinds of statements about God "on faith." But this hardly means they are wrong or incapable of proof, any more than I am wrong to take it on faith that physicists are correct that the world really is a vast sea of quantum energy. Let them figure out the details. I've got more important things to do. I'll just take it on faith and move on. And in.

Speaking of complementarity, one wonders if some of the conundrums of physics cannot be reconciled in this manner. For example, from the standpoint of conventional logic, it is deeply problematic that the electron appears as either particle or wave, depending upon how one looks at it. In other words, it can either be an isolated part, or else a wave that shades off into the totality of existence. In the former sense, things are externally related and local, whereas in the latter sense they are internally related and nonlocal. This is a mystery to the left brain, but a banality to the right.

To extend the analogy a bit -- and again, bear in mind that I am drawing things out to their extremes in order to create a more vivid contrast -- much of the Bible is a primer on verticality. It acquaints us with the vertical realm, while simultaneously furnishing us with a vivid and imaginative kind of language with which to think about, store, and communicate it. This language was obviously quite effective for most of mankind's history. Indeed, it is perhaps difficult for modern sophisticates to understand how easily Christianity spread. People simply heard the story and said, "makes sense to me," and that was that.

But why did it make sense? The modern sophisticate will say that it had something to do with childlike naivete, or fear of death, or wishing to have a spurious sense of control over the environment. This may well be partly true, at least for the masses. But it is patently untrue if one reads the early fathers, whose thinking is enormously subtle and sophisticated, and still completely relevant to moderns, to say the least.

But again, the whole key is to understand things -- or at least to supplement one's understanding -- with symmetrical logic. Asymmetrical logic can know; but only symmetrical logic can truly understand. I might add that it is eminently possible to understand without knowing, which is why the simple person of faith understands so much more than the tenured sophisticate brimming with knowledge.

In The Symmetry of God, Bomford notes that we cannot actually conceve of eternity, since it is both timeless and changeless, whereas linear thought naturally takes place in time. But we can grasp it through various analogies in the herebelow, for example, the "everlasting," which "provides the closest image of the timeless within time." Therefore, we gain a sense of timelessness in proximity to things that are very old, like a European cathedral, or the Pyramids, or Larry King -- anything "whose beginning is lost in the mists of time, the ancient and the ageless, for these approximate in feeling to the everlasting."

At the same time, at the other end of the extreme, we may also glimpse the eternal in the passing moment, "for such a thing is simultaneously whole and unchanging -- it has no time in which to change.... It is there in its fullness -- and it is gone again." Thus, a mystic such as William Blake could see eternity in a flower or grain of sand, just as Lileks can see it in an old matchbook or motel postcard.

Eternity can also be suggested "by the last event of a series." Bomford cites the example of an aging travel-writer "who had long before visited many places for the first time, and returned often, found a renewed significance in returning once more deliberately for the last time. Places regained the freshness of the first visit." Similarly, "the last words of the dying may be seen as a key to an understanding of a whole life. The last of the series completes the picture, ends the story, and thus hints at the instantaneous wholeness of eternity."

Think it is accomlished. Umm, what was? Oh, I don't know, maybe a little bridge between time and eternity in the heart of the cosmos, making each moment an eternal new year where death touches Life and the former is tranfsigured by the latter. Something like that.

Every December 31, we touch the edge of eternity, as we approach the "end" of one year and the "beginning" of another -- the uniting of old and new, as they are joined at midnight. The Book of Revelation captures this quality, only on a cosmic scale, when the enthroned Christ "announces himself as The First and the Last and the Lord God himself is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end." Similarly, St. Augustine "addressed God as 'Thou Beauty, both so ancient and so new,'" an expression of eternity which has a deep unconscious resonance. The absurcular Book of the Raccoon makes the same point in its own bobscure way, in that it ends and begins with the unified vertical interior meeting up with the dispersing horizontal exterior in the eternal nowthing.

Traditional metaphysics always makes a distinction between the God-being and the God-beyond-being -- between the personal God that can be named and thought about and the Supreme Reality that is beyond name and form. The former is the cataphatic God about whom we may talk, debate and theologize in a somewhat linear way, while the latter is the apophatic God which so utterly transcends our categories that the most we can say about it is what it is not. Various formulations are "fingers pointing at the moon," and although they are "doorways" into the divine mystery, one should not mistake the finger for the moon. In the end, God cannot be "known," only undergone.

Most rank-and-file religious people have never heard of the God-beyond-being and might even be offended by the idea. They have a clear conception of what God is like, and don't want to be reminded that the real unconditioned God blows away those mental idols like a tornado through a Buddhist sand painting convention... which, by the way, is the whole point of a sand painting.

This distinction between the God-being and God-beyond-being is actually a vertical distinction within God himself, and perhaps mirrors the distinction within us between symmetrical and asymmetrical logic. It is not a bobmade principle, but one that would be intrinsic to the inner life of the godhead. It is easy to prove that it exists, more problematic to prove that we or anything else can exist outside it. Nevertheless, man himself is a symbol, which means "to throw across," in our case, from God to matter and back up again.

As a matter of fact, the God-beyond-being is the one thing that surely cannot not be, although numerous implications immediately follow. Ultimately it is the distinction between Brahman and maya, between reality and appearance, between absolute and relative, between necessary and contingent. It is the first distinction, from which all else follows.

This brings up an interesting point. That is, does God have divine mind parasites?

Oh yes. I’m afraid so. For what is a mind parasite in the final analysis? It is a relativity that partakes of, and confuses itself with, absoluteness. God being God, he must be present in all relativities. But being God, he cannot help being beyond them as well. A divine mind parasite is a relativity that steals from the Absolute and then forces itself upon others absolutely. In short it is a demon. Like everything else, it must ultimately be "of God," even though it can't be. Only symmetrical logic can reconcile such a problem. Evil must needs be, but woe to the man who commits it!

Last week I wrote a comment pointing out that faith was how we are reconciled to God (and in describing Anonymous and the other troll GDPTY) I would have used all the words you used today, but I don't have the talent (or Gift)....so I'll just stick with faith....good post, hoss...

The image of a tornado through a sand painting convention touches back on yesterday's post; one more way of lofting the grains from the herebelow to the heavens, and that's one heckuva bottleneck.

For example, what can it possibly mean that "Christ is in me" and that "I am in Christ"? From the standpoint of conventional logic, this is patently absurd, like saying that "I am now in the Slacktuary" and that "the Slacktuary is now in me."

I'm reminded of another of your observations, that the child creates the parents, and how that's literally true.

I was slightly higher in math. Ricky, I bet if you were to take the SATs today your score would be outta sight. Mine, too. I'd like to say 'cuz we're smarter, but really it's just that the SATs have been dumbed down, or so I've heard.

On a different note, this video is a good illustration of the last couple of posts, even though it's presented from the materialist perspective.

That’s a great video, Julie. A little “revenge of the nerds” but probably unavoidable or appropriate. One or the other. I still love it. Lyric-editing especially good.I was the perfect age for the Cosmos series when it came out.

Back to the topic at hand, I'm still working my way through Logic and Transcendence toward the end of the Oriental Dialectic and Its Roots in Faith (pg. 128). Am I correct in understanding that the section about Platonists/ Vedantists vs. Semites is another way of describing the distinction between left brain/ right brain intellection?

I would say that there is a certain left brain "coloring" in Vedanta -- rationalism in its deeper sense -- but don't forget, Vedanta is just the distilled essence of a lot of right brain type mythological stuff in the Vedas. And the Semitic religions are superficially more "imaginative" and visionary, and yet, we're the ones who came up with science. Go figure.

But I do very much like the complementarity of Vedanta and Christianity, thus my admiration for Swami Abhishiktanda and for Orthodoxy, which is quite yogic, even if they don't like people saying that. You may have noticed the little om-cross hybrid in the sidebar next to the B'atman...

Thanks, that helps. This section was a slog for me, mainly because of his emphasis on Islam (which I have a very hard time being sympathetic with, even on the levels he's discussing). But then, I figure that's all the more reason to make sure I have some understanding of the underlying concepts.

I -- and at least one other reader -- Warren, I think -- believe that Schuon was fundamentally a Vedantin, not a Muslim. (I might add that he never actually left Christianity behind; this is attested to by Cutsinger. Plus, he was an unabashed devotee of Mary!) True, he was a Sufi, but in my opinion -- and again, I'm not the only one -- Sufism is just Vedanta with an Islamic inflection. Suffice it so to say that there are no Islamic cultures that interpret Islam in the way Schuon does. If they did, at least half the problems in the world would vanish overnight.

It seems that Schuon would agree with you that he is a Vedantist first are foremost:

Guénon was quite right to declare that the Vedanta is the most direct expression of pure metaphysics and, in a certain respect, the most assimilable; no attachment to any non-Hindu tradition obliges us to ignore it or to pretend to ignore it. In the realm of the monotheistic Semitic religions there is one esoterism "of fact" and another "by right"; it is the latter which - whether or not it is "seen for what it is" - corresponds to the wisdom of the Vedanta; de facto esoterism is the esoterism that has come about from what has in fact been said or written, with such veilings and side-tracking as are almost bound to be demanded by a particular framework of theology and, above all, by a particular religious upâya. It was doubtless esoterism de jure that the Qabbalists had in mind when they said that, if the esoteric tradition were lost, the sages could restore it. From "A note on Rene Guenon"

I've written so many meditations on that subject that I couldn't possibly summarize my views. Suffice it to say that I have no fundamental objection to evolution, only to metaphysical Darwinism, the latter of which is ultimately the very negation of evolution. I believe that involution is ontologically prior to evolution, which is how I reconcile metaphysics with science.

Often people project with the right what they reject with the left -- which is why, for example, no one is as religious (in the magical sense) as a Darwinist. Matter is the crock upon which they build their church.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the measured increase in recent years of the placebo/ nocebo effect? People seem to be simply more willing to believe that something is going to have an effect if they are told it will. Given that half the country recently voted on faith that hope & change would magically make everything okay (essentially blocking out the left brain completely), it stands to reason the same types of people would be more likely to have a magical belief in the power of "chemical x". Especially with all of the advertising about the fantastic attributes of today's "chemical x"s.

Which also reminds me of my SIL who worked as a psych nurse in a rehab clinic for a long time. When patients were complaining of various pain or withdrawal symptoms, they'd just give them a saline injection and tell them what it was supposed to do; ofentimes, patients would come back asking what the drug was and how they could get some.

I would venture that if there were any Islamic cultures (or Christian for that matter) that interpreted Islam as Schuon does, they would undoubtedly have you behind bars for interpreting Schuon they way you do.I wonder how the world would look then?

"At length, from this aversion to the success of others and hopelessness of one's own, the mind becomes angry at fortune, complains of the times, retires into corners and broods over its own punishment until it is dissatisfied and loathes itself. For by nature the human mind is active and ready to be influenced; every opportunity of arousing and diverting itself is welcome, but more welcome to the worst natures, which are glad to be worn out in activity. Just as some sores long for the hands that injure them, and delight in being touched, and whatever irritates the foul itch of their bodies is grateful; in like manner I should say that these minds, in which passions break out like bad sores, consider toil and trouble a pleasure. For there are some things which please our body though accompanied with a certain painful feeling; as for instance turning one's self often and changing the side which is not yet tired, and moving one's self first in one position and then in another. "

Ultimately it is the distinction between Brahman and maya, between reality and appearance, between absolute and relative, between necessary and contingent. It is the first distinction, from which all else follows."

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Location: Floating in His Cloud-Hidden Bobservatory, Inside the Centers for Spiritual Disease Control and Pretension, Tonga

Who?! spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!